Travel Day: Stuttgart to Frankfurt, Germany

Ty and I have decided on a catch phrase to describe Stuttgart, “it’s fine”. Nothing was really wrong with our time here, but nothing was really great either. A good part of this may be we’re burnt out on traveling and are ready to be home.

We had a ‘fine’ breakfast at the hotel. R is still feeling junky but we dragged her out today after the morning rain shower. Our plan was to explore Killesberg Park before we check out of the hotel at 4. This park has a theater, playgrounds, petting zoo, narrow gauge steam railway, swimming pool, and a 65 ft tower you can climb! Sounds awesome right? What we had time for was “fine”.

We took the subway there and we apparently started at the bottom of the park and the tower was about halfway up a significant hill to get there.

The thing we’ve noticed over here are these individual little gardens. My best guess is that people from the city own these little plots of land that they can come to to garden, and relax with nature. I love it! Also this one was like a scene from the movie Gnomeo and Juliet. It was awesome!

By the time we made it to the base of the tower, R was wiped! So she stayed down and the three of us raced to the top. L of course won.

We regrouped after the tower and decided to try out the pool. There were diving boards, and a current section that came on occasionally. But the weather went cloudy and cold, so L and I froze. R definitely perked up in the water, because I swear she’s part mermaid. L and I found the warm showers after a while.

We were getting hungry after an hour or so at the pool so we washed up and walked back to the area around the climbing tower. We got some ho-hum food and then walked to the steam train. L really wanted to ride it so that was going to be our last thing we could do in park before we needed to go back to the hotel.

The train was a bit of a mad dash, we had to wait one round because it was so full. Then we almost missed out on the next round. Thanks to L’s quick weaving through the crowd he managed to snag us some of the last seats available.

The train ride was a bit ho-hum as well. We should have known! I think nothing would really have pleased us today. That’s just the kind of moods we’re all in at this point. A quick walk back to the subway, and we packed up for our last train ride of the trip.

I’m so thankful Ty bought the tickets the day before. The prices day of went up a lot, and he even reserved us seats so we don’t have to worry about a mad dash onto the train.

Our train was delayed by 20 minutes which isn’t a big deal since we didn’t have any connections to make. But now it was blazing hot out and the only seats available were in direct sun. The train finally comes and it is packed! Again, so thankful for our assigned seats. We pass a nice hour and half or so on the way to Frankfurt playing some cards and watching a show.

Arriving in Frankfurt it was almost 7:30 and we decided to go ahead and go check in for our flight and give them our luggage. We don’t actually fly out till the next day at noon, but Condor was offering early check in. This was wonderful! We went and got a quick Covid swab, so we can get back into the US. Then we dropped off 3 of our suitcases and and checked in for the flight. It was nice to get rid of the extra bags. A quick subway ride to our hotel and we were all snuggled in bed by 9pm. I think I was asleep soon after, it’s just exhausting navigating around all these different areas (mostly Ty handles that) but also being around people constantly has gotten very tiring. We’re ready to go home, and just turn into hermits for a while. And not wear masks!